THEATER REVIEW : ‘Dark Cloud’ of Remoteness Hangs Over Family Portrait

After being blacklisted as a suspected communist in the early 1950s, actor Will Geer packed up his family and went into exile in the mountains of Topanga. Geer did not find regular work as an actor for a decade, though he later found fame as Grandpa on TV’s “The Waltons.”

More than 40 years after the Hollywood blacklist, Ellen Geer has memorialized her father’s struggle with “ . . . and the Dark Cloud Came,” the new drama she wrote, co-directed (with Heidi Helen Davis) and stars in at The Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga.

“Dark Cloud” gives new meaning to the term family play ; it’s so steeped in Geer family values it makes the autobiographical origins of “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” look positively veiled in comparison.

Besides the dramatist, who narrates the tale as herself, the production also features Will’s widow, Herta Ware playing Ella Reeve Bloor, Ware’s daughter (and Ellen’s half-sister) Melora Marshall playing Herta Ware and several other relatives.

The play, however, is not nearly as impressive as the bloodlines that produced it. “Dark Cloud” is a mess--a windy, self-congratulatory piece of work that, for all of its intimate familial detail, seems oddly remote and impersonal.

Will Geer (Tom Allard) should be the play’s moral force and main character. But here he is a puttering, vaguely noble figure--an earthy philosopher who quotes Shakespeare, studies agriculture and uses down-home expressions.

The first act contrasts the family’s hectic but loving home life with the elder Geer’s tense confrontation before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, where he refused to address questions regarding his suspected membership in the Communist Party. A trio of villainous interrogators (John Randolph, Jeff Corey and Ed Asner) are projected on a video screen, giving them a suitably Big Brotherly quality.

The meandering second act suggests that the hearings were responsible for an affair between Herta and family friend David Marshall (Michael O’Neill) and the subsequent breakup of the family.

“Dark Cloud” reveals a fair degree of political naivete. Even younger viewers may find themselves feeling patronized by a curtain-raiser that imagines a present-day teacher drilling students on the McCarthy era.

But a deeper problem is that the playwright seems less interested in telling a story that examines a difficult moral issue than in settling old scores. Elia Kazan (James Lefebvre), the film and stage director who named names, is shown auditioning young Ellie (Willow Geer-Alsop) for a part in “Splendor in the Grass.” The only good reason for including the scene is that it gives the real Ellen an opportunity to dub Kazan “a rat.” Because “Dark Cloud” praises Will Geer’s spirit of forgiveness, such an act of vengeance seems especially ironic.

* “... and the Dark Cloud Came,” The Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga. Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 7:30 p.m. Ends September 17. $12.50. (310) 455-3723. Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes.